Peter Downsbrough

Peter Downsbrough’s art revolves around subtle moments of connection. In minimalist installations, he relates linguistic, typographical, and graphic elements to the architecture of the respective exhibition space to create geometries and rhythms that not only influence the perception of the space but also speak to its background conditions and structure. Conjunctions such as AND, BUT, AS—syntactic tools that otherwise create connections between words, clauses, or entire sentences—often form the starting point, and are used together with prepositions, verbs, or other word classes to make corners, edges, openings, closures, transparent and opaque surfaces, as well as spatial transitions, speak—both literally and figuratively.

Downsbrough’s formal language, which the artist has been honing since the 1960s, is made even more incisive by the reduction of his work to black letters and lines. These basic, methodically applied elements are fundamental to the artist’s work, not only in architectural contexts but also in the public space, in drawings, models, photographs, videos, and not least artist’s books. With over 100 titles published to date, Downsbrough has opted for the book as the all-encompassing form of expression in his artistic work. For Kunstraum Lakeside, the artist has developed a new site-specific work.